You know what’s good about being a casual colonialist? Having your feet rubbed while watching a DVD of your choosing, munching on a Macanese pork cutlet slider, and drinking unlimited watermelon juice. It is the foundation of the Taipan Foot Massage experience, and 138rmb buys you in for 90 minutes. It is a nice whisper of our forefathers.

Taipan’s empire sprawls across the second floor of a Dagu Lu strip mall, down a long corridor of private rooms. It is like a dimly lit karaoke palace, full of formally dressed servants lurking in the carpeted alleyways. They are there to massage away the accumulated stress of your very important life, to handle the menial tasks of loading your DVD and moisturizing your feet, and, most of all, to come running at the first sign of hunger, bearing lots and lots of mediocre food. (There is a button next to the recliner with which to summon them.)



But for the 24-year-old guy interlocking his fingers and your toes, it is not unlike a trans-oceanic flight. The room is dark and you’re stuck in your seat. The passage of time is marked by attendants bearing snacks, and movies. The food is cheap – curry beef brisket and rice; dry Macanese pork cutlet sliders; fish balls; toast with jam; a pineapple bun; a range of sodas and juices. It could easily come off a narrow cart with tiny wheels, but it’s unlimited, and it’s free, and the masseuses barely even giggle when you order eight fresh watermelon juices, six pork cutlet buns, three fishball noodles, a milk tea, two 7-Ups, and -- what the hell – one of these “serradurra” pudding things – to start.

When you emerge, after collecting your personal carry-in items and putting your shoes back on, you’re dazed and disoriented. And then you stumble out on to Dagu Lu, a showpiece of inauthenticity and transience with all the soul of an international airport terminal. All it's missing is a duty-free.

It's 138rmb well-spent.

A couple of notes. The wait staff have an uncanny ability to sense plot development in movies, and, without fail, will interrupt at a crucial moment in the film with whatever you've ordered. They are particularly attuned to Guy Ritchie’s new Sherlock Holmes, which, by the way, is an excellent film, but at two hours, will require stalling and dawdling should you desire to find out how Lord Blackwood resurrected himself, and why Holmes sees through him, which happens at the end.

The curry beef brisket with rice and potatoes is the most English thing on the menu, and matches Sherlock Holmes best. Most of the “brisket” is fatty scrap, but there are occasional glimpses of actual meat, and they’re not too bad. Yoshinoya-level.

The food is unlimited, as are the sodas, milk tea, juices, and four kinds of tea, and, at no point do the staff even imply that you should restrain yourself, but for the final tiny line on the snack menu, meekly beseeching you: “Don’t waste please.”

Reservations for busy times are suggested, but it works equally well to walk in, let them know how many in your party, and then go hit the many, many DVD shops on the street.

The place is massive. Some masseurs are better than others. With all the distractions available, it doesn't matter so much.

Start slow. Learning to juggle a movie, a massage, and a bowl of fish noodles takes time. Try not to pick a movie that does anything too important for the first ten minutes.

Finally, don’t introduce Holmes to your fiancee. She is probably hiding a deep, dark secret about a past engagement, and though you may have talked about this before, he will inevitably show off his powers of deduction by revealing this, to disastrous effect.

Taipan Foot Massage, 370 Dagu Lu, near Chengdu Lu, 6340 0366. More details and a map here.

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